


complex

by mharris



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, prose about humanity and the will of heaven disguised as a fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 21:18:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mharris/pseuds/mharris
Summary: Crowley is dying of some mysterious illness and Aziraphale just can't be bothered.





	complex

    It's been one week since a conversation in St. James Park with a dark stranger they remember forgetting, but have forgotten to recall. In that time, neither have seen beady eye or feathered wing of any creature above or below, including each other. Aziraphale gleefully cataloged his new inventory, and Crowley, well, Crowley fared less well.

    Crowley came into the shop without warning or preamble. The shop was empty despite the open sign in the window, which was probably a good thing as he leaned heavily on counter taking up all the space except where Aziraphale was typing away at a new computer.

    "Welcome to the Book Shope, _can I help you_?" Aziraphale's voice was scathing.

    "Angel,” Crowley said curtly “I’m dying."

    "I doubt that." Aziraphale said. "Do drape yourself somewhere I'm not working."

    Crowley did not, in fact, drape himself somewhere else. He stayed, leaning across the counter, head pillowed in his arms. He added a bit of groaning for the melodrama. Aziraphale looked at Crowley over his glasses, fingers pausing over his keyboard.

    "I have stomach pains, and I'm sweating a lot, and my back hurts, and there's a pain in my chest, and I just know this is some insidious punishment from down below to kill me slowly from the inside out."

    Aziraphale sighed, and walked away. Crowley waited a moment, then another. Just as he was about to undrape himself and go in search of Aziraphale, Aziraphale came back. He dropped a heavy book next to Crowley's head, which finally made him move, in a start away from the noise. Crowley looked at the book.

    "Look up your symptoms, find out for yourself." Aziraphale said, and went back to his computer.

    Crowley straightened up. The book was several inches thick, and bore the words "A Dictionary of Terms Used in Medicine and the Collateral Sciences" on the cover in gilded letters.

    "I don't understand how humans can have so many things wrong with them," Crowley said, and immediately began scouring the pages in a rather pointed manner.

    "Most of them are human made, cancers and biological warfare." Aziraphale said absently, typing away. "Who would have thought of biological warfare? That's as human as you can get, dropping chemicals on each other. What happened to just slicing each other with swords?"

    "Yes, we would all do better with some good old fashioned hand to hand combat." Crowley said, and stabbed his finger onto the open page before him. "Found it."

    Aziraphale looked over at him, "Your ailment?"

    "No, my plague."

    "You have a plague?"

    "The plague of Justinian," Crowley recited, "was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman Empire, especially its capital Constantinople. One of the deadliest plagues in history, this devastating pandemic resulted in the deaths of an estimated 25 million to 50 million people."

    Aziraphale looked at Crowley over the rim of his glasses for a moment in silence.

    "That was you?"

    "You grab a couple rats and drop em on an outgoing ship and look what it gets you. Mass panic, hysteria, bodies stacked in piles because there are just too many of them." Crowley said, a touch of pride in his voice. It was gone when he spoke again. "Didn't think it'd be that big of a problem, though."

    Aziraphale stared at him thoughtfully for a moment, "Where was I when this was going on?"

    "The beginnings of Europe, I believe."

    Crowley leaned on his elbow, resting on the counter. "There was another one, Uziel or a name like that, he was trifling around there at the time. What he was doing though, I have no idea."

    Crowley turned a page, drawing a finger down the list.

    "Probably something holy, guiding a priest or something." Aziraphale said, though Crowley didn't miss the bitterness in his voice. "Heaven likes to micromanage."

    "Tell me about it," Crowley said, turning another page. "Demons I know will spend a whole lifetime on one person, and where's that getting you? Not efficient, that line of working. Well," Crowley paused, mid page turn. "In a grand scheme, but for that one soul? Have mercy."

    Aziraphale stopped typing, and watched Crowley flip pages and skim ailments.

    "And who has mercy for the already damned?" he asked.

    Crowley paused, finger on the page, then shrugged. "I've found it," he said.

    Aziraphale quirked an eyebrow.

    Crowley, finger still on the page, turned to Aziraphale. "I'm pregnant."

    Aziraphale's carefully constructed restraint cracked, and he rolled his eyes. "Factually impossible."

    Aziraphale reached over and slammed the book closed, barely missing Crowley's fingers. Crowley held the offended appendages close to his chest, and offered what was as close to a sneer as Aziraphale had seen in near a thousand years.

    "When was the last time you slept?" Aziraphale asked.

    "Come again?"

    "Laying down at night, usually, and closing your eyes for extended periods of time. I assumed it was a hobby of yours."

    "Ha ha, angel."

    "I'm serious. You're not yourself."

    "I don't have time for sleep. I have the hounds of hell breathing down my neck. I don't know how you sit there calmly rearranging your books when the heavenly and hellish forces are not at all happy with what we've done and we damn- blessed well know it."

    "Retribution of heaven is swift and merciless," Aziraphale said. "I can't account for hell, but we don't take years pushing around the paperwork. When smiting needs done, Crowley, we usually just send one of the archangels, they're…enthusiastic about their jobs."

    Crowley let the silence draw out while he gave Aziraphale his blankest look his shades would allow.

    "Thank you, angel," he said at last. "That helped a whole lot."

    Aziraphale sighed. "What I mean to say is, if the forces of above or below were going to do something, it would have already been done. Go lay down, you need a nap.”

    "I need a nap?” Crowley said, almost indignantly, "You're the cranky one."

    "Get out of my sight."

    Crowley turned and sauntered toward the back room. "Fine. Your couch is far more comfortable than your presence, anyway."

    Aziraphale frowned, "That's not what I—"

    But Crowley was gone.

-

    Crowley came to some indeterminate time later. He felt as if he had slept a century, his limbs heavy and his head thick with cotton. He hoped no more than a decade had passed. Technology was so hard to keep up with these days that even a few years could radically change the way you interacted with the world. Crowley groaned, and stretched, and popped joints and attempted to smooth out wrinkles. He took off his shoes.

    Aziraphale poked his head through the door as Crowley stood on the scant carpeting making fists with his toes. They looked at each other for a moment.

    "You live." Aziraphale said, pointedly not mentioning his shoelessness.

    "I guess." Crowley said, pointedly not mentioning his shoelessness.

    Aziraphale disappeared again for a moment during which switches could be heard being flicked. He reappeared, the shop behind him dark, and immediately began prepping a pot of tea. Crowley took off his perpetual suit jacket, and the tie— hastily made in the first place— came off after. He was in a sort of relaxed, yet tangled mess at the end of the couch when Aziraphale brought him a cup of tea.

    "Stress," Aziraphale said.

    "Excuse?" Crowley said, giving a perfunctory blow over the steaming beverage before taking a sip.

    "You're experiencing stress." Aziraphale said, sitting down opposite him.

    "I am a demon of hell, I know what stress is."

    "No, you know what devil induced fear is. This sounds like regular human stress."

    Crowley scowled at his cup, and took another drink. They sat in silence for a moment.

    "It's incurable, isn't it?" Crowley asked.

    "Pretty much. You just have to drink a cup of tea, and do some deep breathing and release your mind from the worries of the world."

    "Will that work?"

    "Not usually, but tea is nice." Aziraphale blew at this tea. "Company is nice too."

    Crowley nodded, and together they slipped into a comfortable quiet known only by people intimately familiar with you.

    "It doesn't bother you? At all? The silence?" Crowley asked after a while.

    "Yes," Aziraphale replied, just as soft as Crowley had been. "They're going to leave us in silence and expect us to get on all by ourselves, as usual. They're not going to punish you Crowley, because to do so they'd have to acknowledge it and they're not going to do _that_ , they won't."

    Aziraphale had become a bit heated, and sat down his cup before he spilled it. He pushed his glasses up his nose, and _harumphed_.

    Crowley nodded, watching this. He kept nodding. "So when'd you start wearing glasses?" he asked.

    Aziraphale refused to make eye contact, and casually picked his mug up again. "They just seem like the sort of thing the human I would be would wear."

    Crowley smiled.

    "What?"

    "Nothing."

    "Don't nothing me, what is it?"

    "Uh, can I get another cup?"

    "You're the devil, you are A.J. Crowley."

    "Nah, I just work for him.”


End file.
